Crossing the Lines

by Melvyn Bragg

  Beyond the Hill, past the steps leading up to Birdcage Walk, and the woodyard, beyond the Swimming Baths and the Auction Fields, beyond even the great Georgian house surmounted by that unlikely Italianate bell tower, were the lapping, undulating fields, winding rivers, unnoticed hamlets, remote cottages, lonely copses, remains of mediaeval forest, scars of ancient occupation and battlefield which she knew from country walks with her girl friends and bike rides with Sam and their gang before the war.

  There would be daffodils everywhere now, you came across them in the lanes to farmyards, clusters bending over a stream, their meek heads nodding or shaking in a gentle wind or tossing their heads as it said in the poem she had by heart from school, wild but well secured, the yellows in the petals and trumpet always making her smile to herself, such a golden gift of colour in the sombre browns and greens of the dour Cumbrian land. She could see now, summon up, many places of daffodils.

  Once upon a time such a dip into the reservoir of her past would have been more than enough to occupy her, would have been welcomed, as would this rare chance to be utterly alone in the crowded world of pub and customers, opening times, meal times and cleaning, but not now. Not quite enough. New purposes were budding: one almost immediate and open and backed by Sam; another, soon, he did not know about; and under all, a tidal pull which she herself could not clarify, an ache, even a hunger.

  ‘Sam Richardson standing there sunning himself in all his glory! Good morning to you, Sam.’

  Sam turned and shook his head at Sister Francis, his favourite of all the Irish nuns in the convent attached to St. Cuthbert’s, just down from his pub. Her putty glasses were most of what could be seen of the playful pure fat little face peeping out of the periscope of rigid snow-white wimple.

  ‘I see you won,’ said Sam.

  Only just’ She shook her head. ‘We’ll never catch St. Aidan’s.’

  ‘Second again?’

  ‘Second for the second season running.’ She was vexed. ‘We need a strong centre forward, Sam.’

  ‘They all say that.’

  ‘But they’re good lads. They behave themselves when they come into the pub, don’t they now?’

  ‘Good as gold, Sister Francis.’ He halted. His eyes had swung to the markedly slighter, younger nun beside Sister Francis.

  ‘Sister Philomena. She’s just over from Cork. Very young. Untried. And much to learn. This is Sam Richardson, the landlord of the Blackamoor pub, and very generous he is when we go collecting at Christmas.’

  ‘Just out of Ireland, eh?’ For Sam, Ireland was a heaven of fine horses, of men as mad on sport as he was, of fellows like Diddler he had grown up with, of long stories that could keep the night at bay. ‘I’ve always fancied Ireland.’

  ‘There you are now,’ said Sister Francis.

  ‘What do you make of Wigton?’

  The slight, enwrapped figure who had seemed shy and girlishly subservient first looked at Sister Francis, took the nod, then lifted up startlingly bold eyes to Sam, eyes with an expression that shed all the bondage of confined apparel and said, ‘It’s a terrible disappointment, Mr. Richardson, it is. In Ireland we were told about this great place, England, the palaces, the castles, the big streets, that ruled half the world and lords and ladies and such and I land up in Wigton! Give me Cork any day!’ Eyes, angry now, swept up and down the High Street, ignoring, unaware, uncaring of its Roman and Anglo-Saxon roots, its unquiet persistent history, finding only a place to scorn in its meagre putter of small and few motor cars, its more numerous bicycles and now Diddler’s little cavalcade trotting contentedly back towards Vinegar Hill. ‘And horses!’ she said. ‘Nobody said you’d still have horses!’

  ‘You see, Sam,’ said Sister Francis, ‘there’s work to be done.’ Firmly. ‘We must visit Mr. Nicholls now, the tumour’s as big as a football.’

  Without waiting for a response, indeed blocking it, she shepherded her younger colleague away, leaving Sam to scratch his head with the hand that held the cigarette while he followed them, darkly exotic, wearing robes from remote, pre-Christian Eastern deserts and coiffed in a style perfected in the legendary and jewelled courts of mediaeval Europe, come to this temperate post-war plain northern town as Sisters of Mercy, and yet he also saw them on patrol, one guarding the other’s back, forever on the lookout for the enemy. He followed them until the light wind billowed them around the corner. How, he wondered, could a startling feisty young girl like that so bind and crib herself for the whole of her life? A pure impulse from childhood now straitjacketed. How would she cope with such an imprisonment?

  Henry Allen was standing outside his betting shop, pale consumptive face tilted into the weak sun.

  ‘Take advantage, Sam, every drop.’

  Sam handed over his bets. Henry glanced at them.

  ‘Will you be at Carlisle on Monday? We used to have good days there, eh, Sam?’

  Sam nodded: he had worked part-time for Henry before getting the pub and Carlisle Races had always been a highlight.

  ‘We had our times,’ said Sam, absently.

  ‘They were good times,’ Henry urged. ‘We always ended up at the Crown and Mitre. Still do.’ The barest pause. ‘Here comes trouble.’

  It was only Joe, flattered by Henry’s accusation. He was fingering one of his last three boils, suddenly becoming active on the back of his neck. He stopped at a look from Sam and stretched himself to catch up to his father’s height.

  The men talked on, clocking the town. A slow time of day. Women ferrying the shopping for the next meal when the men came back. Clothes and shops still drab, still weary, after the second great bloodletting of the century. The men looked on names that had survived. Topping the Butcher, Redmayne Gentlemen’s Outfitters, Parks for Shoes, McMechan for Stationery and Papers, Snaith for Clocks and Jewellery, Studholmes, Ismays, two Johnstons, and others, all surmounted by flats to which the owners would soon retreat for Thursday Early Closing and keep their watch over the shop-shut streets.

  The vicar drove by in his old-fashioned open topped car: Joe saw that Edward’s mother was beside him, long blonde hair loose. He did not know where to look. Surely he should have been doing something more Christian on Maundy Thursday: but the vicar waved, while Edward’s mother looked straight ahead.

  'Off to the woods we go.’ Henry’s wasted face followed them enviously.

  ‘Softly, softly.'

  Ellen had her coat on, not for warmth but for respectability, and she went out the minute they returned.

  Determined though she was, it was not an easy task she had set herself, not for someone whose will had been so self-restrained, so resolute in courting ordinariness, aspiring to anonymity.

  ‘S-S-Sadie’s up street.’

  The two women had planned it so.

  ‘It’s you I want to see, George. It won’t take a minute.’ George opened the door of the semi-basement more widely and Ellen stepped into the damp bleak room. She could not remember it looking so bare and poor but she had only been there before with Sadie, whose character warmed the space around her.

  She was uncomfortable to be alone in a room with a man and on his territory even though she knew George well, had been at school with him. She wondered, as did the rest of the town, how this mild, slight, stammering figure could turn into the monster who beat his wife, and the thought clouded her purpose. How could anyone beat Sadie? Drink did it, they said, but other people took drink. ‘W-w-well?’ He made no gesture that she should sit down, as alien to a social visit as she was to such a potential confrontation. She swallowed at her nervousness.

  ‘I’ve come about Sadie. Doreen can’t do the cleaning any more and I want Sadie to come back.’ It was harder than she thought.

  George registered nothing and in that twilit mouldering basement she began to be afraid.

  She paused. It was his turn, surely. It was he who had forbidden Sadie to work in the pub after rumour had wrongly convinced him that she was having a fling with Colin, Ellen’s half-b
rother: the beating he had given her now re-appeared in Ellen’s imagination and she took a step back, back towards the door. ‘Sam won’t let Colin in the pub now.’ He had done odd jobs there for a few years but finally Sam had banned him for persistent theft.

  ‘Colin comes nowhere near it now.’ This was not strictly accurate. After the final thefts, Sam had let Colin keep on the loft above the old stable for his prize budgerigars. But he came and went by a separate door and surely that did not count.

  ‘The money’s good,’ Ellen added, wildly, surprising herself.

  ‘How m-m-much?’

  She told him.

  He seemed to be making a calculation and making it carefully. She had time to notice how big his nose was in that pinched face. The black curly hair uncombed, braces over a tieless shirt; not a scrap of fire. She felt cold.

  Then he smiled.

  ‘You never ch-change, Ellen,’ he said. ‘You were always the b-b-bonniest lass at school.’ He stared at her, greedily enjoying the thick black hair, the rather pale slim face, the nervous, exciting, he thought, brown eyes.

  Ellen nodded, now truly afraid. Her lips parted, she passed her tongue over their inner skin.

  ‘Remember when Joe Willie t-t-tickled Miss Ivinson’s bare b-bum with a bunch of n-nettles when he made a hole in that c-c-corrugated lavatory?’

  George laughed, a gurgling sound, a laugh stuck, not happily, in the throat. ‘There was hell to pay,’ he said and shook his head relishing the memory.

  ‘Let her come back, George. I miss her, you see.’

  ‘Do you?’ He looked amazed. ‘M-m-miss Sadie?’

  ‘I do.’

  And she did. Gypsy-faced Sadie, childless, moneyless, cheaply dressed, dancing Sadie, coarse-toned Sadie, bottom of the heap Sadie, but to Ellen a conduit into wholly unexpected gusts of happiness, sudden songs, trivial moments charged with life, life never let by, let down, cold-shouldered, resented: a friend.

  ‘And you’d be doing me a favour, George.’

  That was the line she had rehearsed. She felt rather a cheat saying it.

  Almost imperceptibly in that crepuscular, damp-moulded room, he nodded.

  ‘Sadie’s coming back’

  ‘Joe’s going to give up training.’ Sam delivered his own news in a tone that punctured Ellen’s announcement.

  ‘I didn’t say for certain.’ The boy kept his head down.

  It was rare that the three of them sat down for a meal together. Ellen had saved up her news as a treat. She had not anticipated no interest.

  ‘He can give up training if he wants.’ Ellen was more vehement than necessary and knew she should not have added, ‘He gave up the piano. Money wasted.’

  ‘They told me you were in line for county trials.’

  Joe bent his sodden head to the half-slice of white bread well covered in jam. He should have said nothing. Whenever you told parents anything they made something of it. They took it the wrong way. They turned it back on you. They found a way to make you wish you had said nothing. It was only because he and his father had been laughing over bits they liked in Lucky Jim that he had dropped his guard. It never paid. Proof: she’d brought up the piano again.

  ‘Maybe he wants to concentrate on other things. Swimming does take a lot of time.’ She was back on his side.

  And she was right. She was often right about him but he would not admit it aloud. Even admitting things gave them a chance to get in to you. He reached out for more bread.

  ‘So Sadie’s coming back.’

  Sam looked at Joe for a common and companionable response but the boy’s head was still down. A few minutes before they had been laughing together and Sam had felt warmth between them, a sense of equality, the same book read, the same passages hitting the funny bone, now gone, so suddenly.

  ‘I like Sadie,’ Joe said, through crumbs and jam, and Ellen was satisfied. Then he added:

  ‘Does that mean Colin will be coming back?’

  Ellen looked away so they could not see the blush of shame.

  ‘No.’ Sam looked towards his wife’s averted face. ‘Colin’s not coming back.’

  ‘Choir practice,’ said Joe, grabbing a biscuit. ‘Early tonight.’ And he was out of the room.

  To do something, Ellen began to clear up although neither she nor Sam had finished.

  ‘So it’s only Saturday afternoon I can go then, is it?’ It was imperative for her to go on Saturday afternoon. Yet she wanted to provoke Sam.

  Her tone was brittle, but Sam thought he understood: she was a lioness with a cub over Colin, even now when she could see through him.

  ‘With one thing and another.’

  ‘With Carlisle Races on Monday.’

  ‘Why do you have to go so far on one of our busiest weekends?’

  ‘I want to go over Easter.’

  ‘But it takes so long to get there, Ellen; there and back.’

  She took a breath: this was the second test.

  ‘Mr. Hawesley’s said he’d give me a lift. He visits an aunt near there. He says it would be no trouble and I could be back by six, seven at the very latest. I’ll leave you your tea. Joe could get fish and chips for your dinner.’

  Sam pulled out a cigarette and said nothing, wondering why such a helpful, friendly offer from a man for whom he had respect, certainly trusted, a man of education … He lit up and drew to the bottom of his lungs … Why was he a little unnerved?

  ‘You seem to have it all sorted out,’ he said.

  Ellen was stung by the softly uttered truth.

  ‘It is my father’s grave,’ she said.

  Sam drew again and poured himself another cup of tea. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘you must go.’

  Ellen cleared the table in silence. They heard the door slam as Joe heaved his bike out and set off for St. Mary’s. It would be opening time in less than half an hour.

  ‘I’m glad Sadie’s coming back,’ Sam said and Ellen nodded, but still felt, unaccountably, shaky.

  She went upstairs to get ready and Sam tried not to think of the two of them together, in the car.

  Ellen had baulked at the big revelation. Her Aunt Grace had told her of a letter received by Colin, a letter from his mother, the woman her father had married after running away from her own mother. Grace had made Colin show her the letter, in which she informed him that she planned to go to his father’s grave at about four o’clock on Easter Saturday.

  Colin said he would not reply, just turn up or not as he felt like. Ellen had seized the moment and written, saying that she too would be there that day, that time. She was distressed at concealing this from everyone, even Sam. It would have been a relief to talk it over with him. But something in her wanted to hold it to herself alone.

  She just had time for a quick bath. She was still cold from that meeting with George - so mild a man he seemed and yet she had come out of that cellar scared cold.

  She heard the front door being opened for custom. Not a day it did not open.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Joe stayed because Alfred stayed. The vicar’s son needed to be reminded of the invitation to tea delivered by Joe the previous Sunday and instantly, graciously accepted by Alfred, on holiday from his public school: but Joe wanted to be sure.

  Alan, his best friend, and Edward, another of the gang, had hurried away after the choir practice to Edward’s house for pontoon and maybe for Edna. It had been hard not to go with them but he had to be certain of Alfred and at this climactic time in the Christian story, his own faith, now at full stretch, demanded he resist all temptation. This could count.

  The organist had stayed, two tenors, one bass, a soprano and two altos: Alfred and he were the only trebles. The vicar entered the vestry. Slowly, burdened, Joe could tell, by what in the Palm Sunday sermon he had called ‘the gravity of Christ’s Passion’. Immediately Joe himself felt more solemn. He set himself to try to capture a worthy Christian image from the flicker of pictures that moved like shadows in his mind, a worthy th
ought from the tumult scurry of almost words. If he was to be a true Christian he must learn to arrest thought and concentrate solely on Jesus Christ. ‘These paintings,’ the vicar’s beautifully bred, rich voice was low, dramatic, ‘show Christ crucified as depicted by artists of the past. I want you to look at them, in silence, I want you to dwell on them, leave singly, and nurse them in your minds through this night of betrayal.’

  Joe was overcome with significance. He felt he ought to recite to himself ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ which they had just been practising.

  They shuffled up, one by one, as for communion, or as pilgrims to a holy well, and the vicar, on the other side of the vestry table, announced, almost chanted, the names of the artists as he pointed to one garishly coloured print after the other. ‘Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Antonello da Messina,’ the pronunciation was round, lingering, ‘Raphael, Titian, el Greco, Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Velasquez, Delacroix. All these great and religious painters drawn as we are to the Passion, a Passion that belongs to each one of us, a death that brought life to the world.’

  Joe was intoxicated by the names and wanted to ask about them but he said nothing. He was fearful before the vicar and still ashamed that he had been barred from serving at the altar: a rejection, a fault he could never forget. For a while the depleted choir stood in solemn silence; only at an indication from the vicar - a hand barely raised -did they steal away. Alfred stayed and so did Joe. ‘Which is your favourite?’ Alfred’s voice was light but utterly confident, clean of dialect, foreign to Joe’s ears, cast from a different mould of diction.

  ‘This.’ The vicar pointed to the van Dyck.

  Joe was disappointed. He would have bet on the Messina, with the two thieves racked, buckled, writhing on their common tree trunks, suffering every bit as much as they should while Christ just hung there, dead, on a proper cross, waiting to be resurrected. But he must be wrong and so he concentrated on the van Dyck. ‘We see the resignation of Christ,’ the vicar said, ‘we see it in the grace and surrender of that broken body. He is not dead but he is beyond pain.’